On the utilization of simplified methodologies for the wheel-rail contact

Abstract

The utilization of multibody systems formulation allows to study the railway vehicle dynamics, as well study local damaging phenomena that occur in the wheel-rail interaction. However, the analysis of these phenomena requires long simulations to perform a significant prediction of their evolution. Having that in mind, the utilization of simplified approaches for the different steps of calculation of wheel-rail contact interaction are addressed. Two parametric surfaces are used to describe both wheel and rail geometries, namely a revolution and an extruded body, respectively. Regarding the normal and tangential contact forces, an elastic approach is considered, therefore, these forces are treated as external forces acting on the multibody system and an Hertzian model with damping is employed for their evaluation. Finally, a trailer vehicle is considered as example of application to study different modeling strategies.